Demodulation apparatus for a network transceiver and method thereof

ABSTRACT

A transceiver of a communication system is disclosed. The transceiver comprises a front-end receiver for receiving a receiving signal and converting to a first signal with a pre-cursor component and a post-cursor component, a noise canceller coupled to the front-end receiver  10  for generating a second signal through eliminating the noise of the first signal, a Feed-Forward Equalizer (FFE) coupled to the noise canceller for generating a third signal through eliminating the pre-cursor component in the second signal according to a transfer function including a plurality of adjustable constants, wherein the adjustable constants includes a main-tap and the value of the main-tap is predetermined, and a decoding system coupled to the FFE for decoding the third signal and eliminating the post-cursor component in the third signal.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application is related to the co-pending application entitled “Demodulation apparatus for a network transceiver and method thereof”, application Ser. No. 10/687,771, filed on the same day as the present application and assigned to the same assignee, the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a network transceiver for Ethernet communication system and a method thereof, and more particularly, to an apparatus for estimating, equalizing and demodulating of a transceiver for Gigabit Ethernet system and a method thereof.

2. Description of Related Art

For an Ethernet system, a receiver to accurately receive data at a receiving-end may include the following devices: a feed-forward equalizer (FFE), a feed-back equalizer (FBE), a timing recovery (TR), an ECHO canceller, an NEXT (Near-End-Cross-Talk) canceller, etc. In order to find the appropriate coefficients of the devices, the conventional method, which is known to be a data-directed approach, is that the transceiver of the transmitting end transmits signals known by both ends to the transceiver of the receiving end and the appropriate coefficients for the devices of the receiving end are determined according to the receiving known signals.

However, according to the IEEE 802.3ab standard, a decision-directed approach is introduced to determine and/or adjust the appropriate operating coefficients of the devices. When determining the appropriate operating coefficients of the devices, the receiving signals are unknown by the receiver in advance. However, since the operation of the devices may have interaction to each other when determining the coefficients, the determined coefficients of the devices may not be converged to an appropriate value. Thus, signals transmitted by the transceiver cannot be received.

In a Gigabit Ethernet communication system, the transmission rate is up to 125 MSPS. Therefore, with consideration of chip area and power consumption, a configuration of baud-rate signal processing is adapted. Due to the Decision-Directed Adaptation and baud-rate signal processing configuration, a serious interaction appears among for example, an echo canceller and NEXT canceller and a feedforward equalizer (FFE), the FFE and the timing recovery (TR), the FFE and the feedback equalizer (FBE).

In the conventional Gigabit Ethernet systems shown in FIG. 1, slicer errors are considered as the error signal for adjusting the echo canceller and the NEXT canceller. Both cancellers are placed behind the FFE. However, the coefficients of echo and NEXT canceller may change along with the change of the coefficients of the FFE. It may cause serious interaction and the speed of the convergence of the coefficients thus becomes slower. The conventional method is to fix the coefficients of the echo and NEXT cancellers. However the performance of the Gigabit Ethernet communication system may thus be degraded.

Therefore, it is desirable to provide an improved demodulation apparatus for a network transceiver and the method thereof to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

An object of the present invention is to provide a network transceiver and the method thereof to avoid poor performance or system divergence from interaction between devices.

To achieve the objects, a transceiver of a communication system is disclosed. The transceiver comprises a front-end receiver for receiving a receiving signal and converting the receiving signal to a first signal with a pre-cursor component and a post-cursor component, a noise canceller coupled to the front-end receiver for generating a second signal through eliminating the noise of the first signal, a Feed-Forward Equalizer (FFE) coupled to the noise canceller for generating a third signal through eliminating the pre-cursor component in the second signal according to a transfer function including a plurality of adjustable constants, wherein the adjustable constants include a main-tap and the value of the main-tap is predetermined, and a decoding system coupled to the FFE for decoding the third signal and eliminating the post-cursor component in the third signal.

Other objects, advantages, and novel features of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a diagram of a system configuration of a receiver for a conventional Gigabit Ethernet transceiver;

FIG. 2 is a diagram of a system configuration of a receiver for a Gigabit Ethernet transceiver according to the embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a circuit diagram of the receiver of FIG. 2 according to the embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a circuit diagram of an adaptive filter according to the embodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 5 is a circuit diagram of a reference echo canceller according to the embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

FIG. 2 shows a preferred embodiment of a receiver for a network transceiver according to the present invention. In FIG. 2, the receiver includes a front-end receiver 10, a feed-forward equalizer (FFE) 20, a noise canceller 30, a timing recovery (TR) 40 and a decoding system 50. The front-end receiver 10 is for receiving a signal and converting the signal to a first signal in digital form with a pre-cursor component and a post-cursor component. The noise canceller 30 is coupled to the front-end receiver 10 For eliminating the noise of the first signal and thus generating a second signal. The FFE 20 is coupled to the noise canceller 30 for eliminating the pre-cursor component in the second signal and thus generating a third signal. The decoding system 50 is coupled to the FFE 20 for decoding the third signal and eliminating the post-cursor component in the third signal.

FIG. 3 is a detailed block diagram of the receiver for the network transceiver according to FIG. 2. The front-end receiver 10 includes an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) 11, an inverse partial response (IPR) filter 12, a sample-and-hold (S/H) circuit 13, a low pass filter (LPF) 14, and an analog auto-gain controller (AAGC) 15. The AAGC 15 is coupled to an input signal for adjusting the amplitude of the input signal. The LPF 14 is coupled to the AAGC 15 for filtering high frequency part of the input signal and thus generating a filtered input signal. The S/H circuit 13 is coupled to the LPF 14 for sampling and holding the filtered input signal and thus generating an S/H signal.

In the conventional Gigabit transceiver architecture, the conventional IPR filter is set after the A/D converter 11 and is for filtering the digital signal equivalent to the receiving analog signal. In the present invention, the IPR filter 12 is set prior to the A/D converter 11 and functions to compensate the ISI introduced by the partial response filter in the transmitter part of the remote transceiver. Thus, a peak-to-average ratio of the receiving signal is reduced when the signal outputted from the IPR filter 12 enters to the ADC 11. Through the cooperative function of the S/H circuit 13, the IPR filter 12, the A/D converter 11, and the timing recovery 40, the quantization noise of the receiving signal is minimized and a signal-to-noise ratio of the receiving signal is increased. In this embodiment, the IPR filter 12 is an infinite impulse response (IIR) filter with a transfer function of

$\frac{1}{\frac{3}{4} + {\frac{1}{4}Z^{- 1}}}.$ The ADC 11 is coupled to the IPR filter 12 for generating a first signal in digital form.

The noise canceller 30 coupled to the ADC 11 includes an echo canceller 31, three near-end cross-talk (NEXT) cancellers 32, and an adder 33. The echo canceller 31 is for canceling the echo effect caused by the transceiver transmitting and receiving signals through the same channel. The NEXT cancellers 32 are for canceling the cross-talk effect caused by the transceiver transmitting and receiving signals through one channel while transmitting and receiving signals through other channels. The adder 33 is for subtracting noises produced by the echo canceller 31 and the NEXT cancellers 32 from the first signal and thus generating a second signal.

Suppose that an optimal coefficient for the FFE 20 is ffe(n). However, since the operation of the FFE 20 and the timing recovery (TR) 40 are interactive, the coefficient produced by the FFE 20 may become ffe(n)*sinc(n−τ), wherein * is the convolution operation, n is a timing index, τ is a timing delay, and the shifting factor sinc(n−τ) is caused by the interaction with timing recovery. In the present invention, the main-tap of the FFE 20 is set to be 1 and a right-hand tap closest to the main-tap is set to a fixed value, the influence of sinc(n−τ) to ffe(n), which means the interaction between the FFE 20 and TR 40 can thus be reduced. In this manner, the convergence speed of the coefficient of the FFE 20 can be reduced. The determined coefficient of the FFE 20 can be approximate or equaled to the optimal solution ffe(n).

The FFE 20 is coupled to the noise canceller 30 for generating a third signal through eliminating the pre-cursor component of the second signal. The FFE 20 includes an adaptive filter 21 and a digital auto-gain controller (DAGC) 22. The adaptive filter 21 is a finite impulse response filter. The circuit diagram of the adaptive filter 21 is shown in FIG. 4. In this embodiment, a transfer function of the adaptive filter 21 is C₀Z³+C₁Z²+C₂Z¹ +1 +C₄Z⁻¹+C₅Z⁻²+C₆Z⁻³, where C₀, C₁, C₂, C₄, C₅, and C₆ are adjustable constants and Z represents a delay element. The main-tap is set to be 1. Through setting the main-tap to be a predetermined value, preferably, 1, the circuit complexity of the FFE 20 can be simplified. In addition, a right-hand tap adjacent to the main-tap C₄ is set to be 0.5 according to the simulation and the practical experiment. The DAGC 22 is coupled to the adaptive filter 21 for adjusting the magnitude of the signal outputted from the adaptive filter 21 to meet the operating range requirement of the decoding system 50. The adjustment of the DAGC 22 is based on the constants determined by the adaptive filter 21. Through setting the main-tap to be 1 and the right-hand tap adjacent to the main-tap C₄ to be 0.5, the output signal of the DAGC 22 must do the corresponding adjustment.

The decoding system 50 includes a feedback equalizer (FBE) 51 and a decision feedback sequence estimator (DFSE) 52. The decoding system 50 is coupled to the FFE 20 for decoding the third signal and eliminating the post-cursor component in the third signal. The decoding system 50 also generates a slicer error signal. The slicer error signal is applied to adjust coefficients of the echo canceller 31, the NEXT cancellers 32, and the FBE 51. The FBE 51 is for eliminating the post-cursor component of the third signal. An output signal of the decoding system 50 is a tentative decision signal. The tentative decision signal and the slicer error signal are transmitted to the timing recovery 40 for determining sampling frequency and phase of the timing recovery 40. The timing recovery 40 generates a timing signal to the S/H circuit 13 for determining sampling timing of the S/H circuit 13.

The reliability of the slicer error is determined through eye-pattern diagram. When an eye-pattern is not opened (SNR<10 dB), the coefficients of both the echo canceller 31 and the NEXT cancellers 32 are converged slowly and the timing shift of the FFE 20, the FBE 51, and the timing recovery 40 may thus become serious. In this manner, the convergence of the coefficients of the system are more difficult to be estimated. In order to solve this problem, more training symbols is used in initialization to pre-estimate coefficients of the cancellers 31 and 32 through orthogonal principle. The expression is as follows: Eh(D)=E[Rx(D)·Td(D)]=E[(Eh(D)·Td(D)+Ch(D)·Rd(D)+N(D))·Td(D)]  (1) where Rx(D) is the received signal,

-   -   Eh(D) is the echo channel response,     -   Td(D) is the transmission data,     -   Ch(D) is the transmission channel response,     -   Rd(D) is the remote transmission data, and     -   N(D) is noise.

Because the Td(D) and Rd(D) and N(D) are uncorrelated and Td(D) is an independent identical (i.i.d.) signal, ensemble average operation can be performed to replace the conventional expectation operation to obtain the required echo channel response. Accordingly, the equation (1) is changed as follows.

$\begin{matrix} {{\underset{\_}{Eh} = \frac{\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N}\;{{{Rx}(i)} \cdot {\underset{\_}{Td}(i)}}}{N}}{{\underset{\_}{Eh}}_{i + 1} = {{{\underset{\_}{Eh}}_{i} + {{\frac{1}{N} \cdot {{Rx}(i)} \cdot {\underset{\_}{Td}(i)}}\mspace{14mu}{for}\mspace{14mu} 1}} \leq i \leq N}}} & (2) \end{matrix}$ The equation (2) can be implemented by a circuit shown in FIG. 5 for pre-estimating and presetting coefficients of the cancellers 31 and 32 in initialization and thus speeding up the system convergence.

In the present invention, the Gigabit Ethernet transceiver the coefficients of the cancellers 31 and 32 can be determined without the effect caused by the FFE 20. Additionally, the configuration of the DAGC 22 and the adaptive filter 21 are implemented in the transceiver. The main-tap of the adaptive filter 21 is set to be 1 and the right-hand tap closest to the main-tap is set to be a fixed value. Furthermore, the received signal is passed through the inverse partial response filter 12, of which the response function is opposite to a partial response filter at transmitting-end, before inputting into the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) 11. The peak-to-average ratio (PAR) of the received signal and the quantization noise can thus be reduced. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is improved.

Although the present invention has been explained in relation to its preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that many other possible modifications and variations can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as hereinafter claimed. 

1. A feed-forward equalizer (FFE) of a communication system comprising: an adaptive filter for filtering a receiving signal according to a transfer function including a plurality of parameters to eliminate a pre-cursor inter-symbol interference (pre-ISI) of the receiving signal, the adaptive filter comprising: a plurality of delay elements for generating a plurality of delay signals according to the receiving signal; a plurality of multiplier for respectively multiplying the receiving signal and the delay signals by the parameters and thereby generating a plurality of multiplied signals, wherein at least one of the parameters remains fixed while the other parameters are adjusted to converged values, so as to accelerate the convergence of the communication system; and a summing circuit for summing the multiplied signals to generate a filtered receiving signal; and a digital auto-gain controller (DAGC) coupled to the adaptive filter for adjusting the magnitude of the filtered receiving signal according to the transfer function; wherein a center multiplier among the multipliers is designated to multiply one of the delay signals by the fixed parameter to generate one of the multiplied signals.
 2. The FFE as claimed in claim 1, wherein at least two of the parameters remain fixed, the center multiplier and an adjacent multiplier neighboring the center multiplier respectively multiply two of the delay signals by the two fixed parameters to generate two of the multiplied signals.
 3. The FFE as claimed in claim 1, wherein the fixed parameter utilized by the center multiplier is
 1. 4. The FFE as claimed in claim 1, wherein the transfer function is C₀Z³+C₁Z²+C₂Z¹+C₃+C₄Z⁻¹+C₅Z²+C₆Z³, wherein C₀, C₁, C₂, C₃, C₄, C₅, and C₆ are the parameters, Z represents a delay element among the delay elements, and C₃ is the fixed parameter utilized by the center multiplier.
 5. The FFE as claimed in claim 4, wherein C₃ is
 1. 6. The FFE as claimed in claim 4, wherein C₄ is −0.5.
 7. A transceiver of a communication system, comprising: a front end receiver for receiving a receiving signal and converting the receiving signal to a first signal with a pre-cursor component and a post-cursor component; a noise canceller coupled to the front end receiver for generating a second signal through eliminating the noise of the first signal; a Feed-Forward Equalizer (FFE) coupled to the noise canceller for generating a third signal through eliminating the pre-cursor component in the second signal according to a transfer function including a plurality of parameters, at least one of the parameters remains fixed while the other parameters are adjusted to converged values, so as to accelerate the convergence of the communication system, the FFE comprising: an adaptive filter for filtering a receiving signal according to the transfer function to eliminate the pre-cursor component, comprising: a plurality of delay elements for generating a plurality of delay signals according to the receiving signal; a plurality of multiplier for respectively multiplying the receiving signal and the delay signals by the parameters and thereby generating a plurality of multiplied signals, wherein a center multiplier among the multipliers is designated to multiply one of the delay signals by the fixed parameter to generate one of the multiplied signals; and a summing circuit for summing the multiplied signals to generate a filtered receiving signal; and a digital auto-gain controller (DAGC) coupled to the adaptive filter for adjusting the magnitude of the filtered receiving signal according to the transfer function and thereby generating the third signal; and a decoding system coupled to the FFE for decoding the third signal and eliminating the post-cursor component in the third signal.
 8. The transceiver as claimed in claim 7, wherein at least two of the parameters remain fixed, the center multiplier and an adjacent multiplier neighboring the center multiplier respectively multiply two of the delay signals by the two fixed parameters to generate two of the multiplied signals.
 9. The transceiver as claimed in claim 7, wherein the fixed parameter utilized by the center multiplier is
 1. 10. The transceiver as claimed in claim 7, wherein the transfer function is C₀Z³+C₁Z²+C₂Z¹+C₃+C₄Z¹+C₅Z²+C₆Z³, wherein C₀, C₁, C₂, C₃, C₄, C₅, and C₆ are the parameters, Z represents a delay element among the delay elements, and C₃ is the fixed parameter utilized by the center multiplier.
 11. The transceiver as claimed in claim 10, wherein C₃ is
 1. 12. The transceiver as claimed in claim,11 wherein C₄ is −0.5.
 13. A feed-forward equalizer (FFE) of a communication system comprising: a multi-tap filter for filtering a receiving signal, comprising: a plurality of delay elements coupled in series for generating a plurality of delay signals according to the receiving signal, each of the delay signals corresponding to a different delay, one of the delay signals corresponding to a middle delay among the different delays; a plurality of multiplier for respectively multiplying the receiving signal and the delay signals by a plurality of parameters and thereby generating a plurality of multiplied signals, wherein at least one of the parameters remains fixed while the other parameters are adjusted to converged values, so as to accelerate the convergence of the communication system; and a summing circuit for summing the multiplied signals to generate a filtered receiving signal; and a digital auto-gain controller (DAGC) coupled to the adaptive filter for adjusting the magnitude of the filtered receiving signal according to the parameters; wherein the multipliers are coupled in parallel sequentially and a center multiplier among the multipliers is designated to multiply the delay signal with the middle delay by the fixed parameter to generate one of the multiplied signals.
 14. The FFE of claim 13, wherein at least two of the parameters remain fixed while the other parameters are adjusted.
 15. The FFE of claim 14, wherein two of the multipliers respectively multiply two of the delay signals by the two fixed parameters.
 16. The FFE of claim 15, wherein the two multipliers utilizing the two fixed parameters are coupled adjacently.
 17. The FFE of claim 13, wherein at least two of the parameters remain fixed, the center multiplier and an adjacent multiplier neighboring the center multiplier respectively are designated to multiply two of the delay signals by the two fixed parameters to generate two of the multiplied signals. 